rimarily the movement demanded that the Chinese people be allowed to exercise the rights which had long existed on paper, including the right s of free speech and freedom of assembly, freedom of organisation and freedom of publication. Again the concern with legal guarantees for these rights echoes the post-Cultural Revolution, early 1970s demand for "socialist Legality" expressed by Li Yizhe, "the legal protection of the people from arbitrary arrest or political persecution. The views of the Democracy wall Movement led them to oppose the remaining followers of the Gang of Four. In this the movement was useful to Deng Xiaoping and he actually seems to have encouraged it while it suited him. When questioned about democracy wall by overseas visitors he reaffirmed more than once that the Chinese people had every right to express their views and that the CCP was not in the least concerned with the criticism in the posters. However he changed his view later on. During 1979, the movement progressed from using wall-posters to publishing unofficial journals. Again this was a national development and was not merely confined to Beijing. Most Chinese cities had at least one journal and the bigger cities had as many as half a dozen, including campus publications by students. Some journals were purely literary others were mainly political, concentrating on politics, current affairs and social issues such as poor living standards and youth unemployment. The problem of democratic management in industry was widely discussed, not surprisingly since many of the editors of these journals were themselves workers. Proposals for self-management by workers without party interference found considerable support amongst journal writers. Many journals focused on human rights, but this soon proved to be a touchy subject. Human rights activists were criticised for slavishly following the Americans, and were told that western-style human rights were inferior to Chin...
